Dragon’s Crown Pro Review – Magical Enhancement

Dragon’s Crown is a fun action role-playing game with gorgeous visuals and chaotic multiplayer gameplay. Originally released on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, Dragon’s Crown Pro is a remastered version of the game for PlayStation 4. The beautiful artwork by Vanillaware gets a much appreciated upscale to 4K resolution, in addition to other features that make an already great game even better. But all of the new things in here don’t address some old concerns from the original, which is a bit disappointing.

If you never played Dragon’s Crown before, the setup is your typical hyper-extended fantasy action game with a basic plot. You create a hero based on one of six character classes, each with their own abilities, special attacks, and disadvantages. Either alone or working together as a team of four, you battle legions of enemies in a fantastical world, all while partaking on a quest to defeat a giant dragon from another realm. Not much else there to go on beyond that. The story may be very basic in comparison to other fantasy games out there, but the gameplay and over-the-top visuals are what makes Dragon’s Crown stand out in wild fashion.

The controls are very responsive and the fighting is easy to get into, even when the screen gets way too hectic with everyone on screen. When you’re playing with a group of four online, it can sometimes be a little difficult to notice where your character is located even with the icon displays marking off each ally. On the PlayStation 3 this was a problem when things got too chaotic with so many bodies on the screen at once.

With Dragon’s Crown Pro on PlayStation 4, the upgrade to 4K quality does offer a lot more detail to everything you see, but it seldom does anything when this same problem occurs. You’ll definitely notice smaller details in all over with the visual upgrade, but things can still become cluttered when everyone is brawling.

Going online and searching for a group to explore the beautiful dungeons and environments is still easy to do in Dragon’s Crown Pro. You can appear online and allow players to drop-in or drop-out at any time, which can be very helpful when you’re deep within a stage already and need assistance taking down monsters. However, you’ll be matched up with a wider pool of players with Dragon’s Crown Pro because of the cross-platform between the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita versions of Dragon’s Crown. You won’t notice what platform someone is playing on if you get paired up with them, but that won’t matter if you’re beating up enemies together afterwards.

There’s a lot of good in this package that still makes Dragon’s Crown fun to play, but very little in terms of brand new content. While the previously released downloadable content for Dragon’s Crown is already included with Dragon’s Crown Pro, don’t expect to see anything else beyond that. There are no new characters, no new areas to explore, and no new story content added on. This will be a downer for anyone who has already played through Dragon’s Crown and was hoping for more reason to play through it again outside of the visual upgrade.

Dragon’s Crown Pro is for everyone that missed out on it the first time. The visuals are still phenomenal and look even more so in 4K resolution on PlayStation 4. The gameplay is great despite a few issues that can pop up when playing with a full group of people, which may or may not factor in to some experiences. While there is no brand new content to compliment what came before, that doesn’t mean players who have already experienced it shouldn’t dive in again when they can.

This review was based on a digital review code for Dragon’s Crown Pro for PlayStation 4, provided by ATLUS.

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Jakejames Lugo Senior Editor Jakejames Lugo is a life-long gamer, anime fan, movie-goer, podcaster, and great friend. Jakejames is always working hard, striving to accomplish great things within the gaming industry.